GUITAR SOLOS

GUITAR SOLOS is an hour of solo, instrumental, acoustic guitar music. Its thirteen pieces were composed by Doug Adamz. Listeners have described the overall feeling of GUITAR SOLOS as tranquil and calming. Adamz’ compositions have a simple elegance and rich emotional depth. He’s written for the Joffrey Balley, The Kronos Quartet, and for his own world-beat group, Light Rain. His music has been used in a film by Robert Altman and in the Spanish television series La Frontera Herida and La llamada de Africa This is the first collection of his works for solo guitar.

“Working on this album really felt like a homecoming to me. Throughout the years of playing many different styles of music I’d always come home to relax by playing the guitar for my friends and myself. I’m so happy to have finally recorded an hour of these musings.”

Airship, Dreamship
Ship of Sound,

That fateful day
when the heroes rode by the farm
they came with thundering drums,
and cymbals,
hurdy gurdy,
and tambourine.
Their airborn steeds were music itself,
and in their arms they carried
not swords or clubs or guns.
No,
their Excalibur sported strings
and could hum a chord
that would shake the world.

Airship, Dreamship,
Ship of Sound.

The women were mythical angels,
divas,
clairevoyant,
clear voiced,
who sang hosanna to the highest,
keening clearly,
who were wiser than kings
or presidents,
who, for one mad moment,
muzzled the maws of war dogs
with a scrap of poetry
and a strummed guitar.

Airship, Dreamship,
Ship of Sound.

Like legions of pied piper children ,
wide eyed, we followed,
through dazzling skyways,
deadly dark valleys,
junk man’s alleys,
dragging feet through sucking mud,
heads spinning galaxies,
ferris wheel cliff hangers,
perilous rambles,
miraculous rescues,
melted into utter exhaustion,
hollow of hope,
ground down,
lost and found,
‘til you find it there
in your arms again;
the voluptuous wooden box
held to heart,
the plucked strings blur,
light twinkles
in shadowy corners,
harmony is heard
in the heartbeat of a stone
and the order of the universe
is palpable again,
ushered by wordless prayer
from the guitar.

Airship, Dreamship,
Ship of Sound.

January 2006
Doug Adamz

If you purchased a copy of this album with the black and white cover pictured to the right, please mail the cover to me and I will send you a new, re-recorded album (along with your original cover if you want it). After working diligently on the album pictured to the right, and having a couple of glorious CD release concerts, and after repeated listenings, I decided to do the whole album over again...from scratch! I heard technical problems in the recording that I couldn’t live with, and by then I was playing the pieces with much more freedom and spirit. The new Guitar Solos is the exact same collection of tunes, but recorded and performed with more verve and clarity.......doug

Learn to play the music on this album! Sheet music is now available.
To request music for any of the Guitar Solos pieces,
e-mail Doug: doug@dougadamz.com